Just when I thought – after completing my 1,000th game of Freecell this year, at a 63% success rate – that the week could not get any more exciting, news reaches me that the pro-AV campaigners have at last worked out a way to bring the swaying, shifting mass of the electorate round to their way of thinking before the planned 5 May referendum. I know! Calm yourselves – I am not one to keep you teetering on the anticipatory brink for too long... They are going to use the mood of optimism, the collective connubial bliss that will apparently envelop the nation courtesy of the royal wedding six days earlier, to shepherd us into this new and glorious democratically-reformed morn! There had been a call by some campaigners to harness it instead to the joy surrounding the spring broadcast of Mad Men series five on Sky, but this was presumably complicatedly and transferably outvoted by the anti-Murdoch, pro-BBC and monarchist crowds.

Obvs, it's an absolute banker of a theory. (And the public announcement of such a strategy is an interesting evolutionary leap for spin doctoring. From now on, we are evidently expected to be their puppets and admire the strings.) The yes campaign can basically dust off its hands on its trousers now, sit back with a cup of tea and wait for us all to trip down to the ballot box (festooned, I hope, with mock-bridal veils made of commemorative tea towels; or, if truly infused with the spirit of hopefulness and possessed of the necessary equipment, an assortment of royal wedding-branded condoms). Once there, we'll gaily vote "Yes!" to the proposed amendment and "Bye-bye!" to the traditional first-past-the-post system, whereby everyone votes for the name that is most familiar to them, has a coffee on the way back and tells the boss there was a terrible queue, but what can you do except wait patiently in line when it comes to something as important as exercising one's democratic rights.

But just in case – and remember, I'm, like, crazy-pessimistic as a general rule, so you don't have to pay any attention to me – this wedding ruse doesn't have quite the effect they're hoping for, I feel the need to offer campaigners just a few alternative plans for getting the nation a) out and b) on side.

1 Tell them exactly what AV is.

2 Don't. Preserve an air of mystery and exclusivity about it. "Whatever constitutional overhaul this results in," people will think as they tick the aye box, "at least it will have the charm of novelty and surprise."

(NB These first two strategies are not mutually exclusive. I have been reading about AV for eight hours now – my eyes are bleeding – and still feel I could be the perfect beneficiary of either.)

3 When people ask what the key selling point of AV is, say, "It will make MPs more accountable and end the damaging culture of safe seats." Do not say, "It gives mad perverts/racists/homophobes who vote for the mad pervert/racist/homophobic candidate more bites at the cherry via vote redistribution." Or tell them it will make Nick Clegg happy. Not as happy as proportional representation, but it might lift some of the foggy sadness clouding his eyes. (What do you mean, "His promise-breaking, service-shutting, forest-selling, library-burning eyes"?)

4 Recommend it as a slimming aid. "The energy expenditure as you try to work out the impact your preference rankings might have on the serpentine processes of a largely-as-yet-untested-outside-Australia-or-Papua-New-Guinea electoral system will lose you pounds! Every trip to an AV ballot box is the equivalent of two spinning classes and a boxercise."

5 Get celebrities involved. One flirtatious tweet from Shane Warne telling Elizabeth Hurley that "U R my 2nd preference but if my wife gets eliminated in nxt round of voting you'll be my No 1!" could really swing this thing.